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2The Emergence of Word-Meaning in Early China: Normative Models for WordsSUNY Press. 2022.The Emergence of Word-Meaning in Early China makes an innovative contribution to studies of language by historicizing the Chinese notion that words have "meaning" (content independent of instances of use). Rather than presuming that the concept of word-meaning had always existed, Jane Geaney explains how and why it arose in China. To account for why a normative term (yi, "duty, morality, appropriateness") came to be used for "meanings" found in dictionaries, Geaney examines interrelated patterns…Read more
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7Language as Bodily Practice in Early China: A Chinese GrammatologySUNY Press. 2018.Challenges the idea held by many prominent twentieth-century Sinologists that early China experienced a “language crisis.” Jane Geaney argues that early Chinese conceptions of speech and naming cannot be properly understood if viewed through the dominant Western philosophical tradition in which language is framed through dualisms that are based on hierarchies of speech and writing, such as reality/appearance and one/many. Instead, early Chinese texts repeatedly create pairings of sounds and vari…Read more
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Míng (名) as “Names” Rather than “Words”In Carine Defoort & Roger T. Ames (eds.), Having a Word with Angus Graham: At Twenty-Five Years Into His Immortality, Suny Series in Chinese Philoso. pp. 137-164. 2018.
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16The Way of Water and Sprouts of VirtueJournal of the American Oriental Society 120 (2): 304. 2000.
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25Movement and Ming (Names): A Response to “Incongruent Names: A Theme in the History of Chinese Philosophy”Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 19 (4): 635-644. 2020.
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16Methods of the Way: Early Chinese Ethical ThoughtJournal of the American Oriental Society 123 (2): 409. 2003.
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29Sharing the Light: Representations of Women and Virtue in Early ChinaJournal of the American Oriental Society 120 (1): 140. 2000.
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39A Critique of A. C. Graham's Reconstruction of the "Neo-Mohist Canons"Journal of the American Oriental Society 119 (1): 1. 1999.A. C. Graham's Later Mohist Logic, Ethics, and Sciences is the only Western-language translation of the obscure and textually corrupt chapters of the Mozi that purportedly constitute the foundations of ancient Chinese logic. Graham's presentation and interpretation of this difficult material has been largely accepted by scholars. This article questions the soundness of Graham's reconstruction of these chapters . Upon close examination, problems are revealed in both the structure and the content …Read more
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9Chinese Cosmology and Recent Studies in Confucian Ethics: A Review EssayJournal of Religious Ethics 28 (3): 451-470. 2000.Scholars of early Chinese philosophy frequently point to the non transcendent, organismic conception of the cosmos in early China as the source of China's unique perspective and distinctive values. One would expect recent works in Confucian ethics to capitalize on this idea. Reviewing recent works in Confucian ethics by P. J. Ivanhoe, David Nivison, R. P. Peerenboom, Henry Rosemont, and Tu Wei‐Ming, the author analyzes these new studies in termsof the extent to which their representation of Conf…Read more
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48Chinese Cosmology and Recent Studies in Confucian Ethics: A Review Essay (review)Journal of Religious Ethics 28 (3). 2000.Scholars of early Chinese philosophy frequently point to the nontranscendent, organismic conception of the cosmos in early China as the source of China's unique perspective and distinctive values. One would expect recent works in Confucian ethics to capitalize on this idea. Reviewing recent works in Confucian ethics by P. J. Ivanhoe, David Nivison, R. P. Peerenboom, Henry Rosemont, and Tu Wei-Ming, the author analyzes these new studies in terms of the extent to which their representation of Conf…Read more
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68Grounding "language" in the senses: What the eyes and ears reveal about Ming 名 (names) in early chinese textsPhilosophy East and West 60 (2). 2010.For understanding early Chinese "theories of language" and views about the relation of speech to a nonalphabetic script, a thorough analysis of early Chinese metalinguistic terminology is necessary. This article analyzes the function of ming & (name) in early Chinese texts as a first step in that direction. It argues against the regular treatment of this term in early Chinese texts as the equivalent of "word." It examines ming in light of early Chinese ideas about sense perception, the mythology…Read more
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431Guarding moral boundaries: Shame in early confucianismPhilosophy East and West 54 (2): 113-142. 2004.: In response to allegations that China is a "shame culture," scholars of Confucian ethics have made use of new studies in psychology, anthropology, and philosophy that present shame in a more favorable light. These studies contend that shame involves internalization of social moral codes. By adapting these new internal models of shame, Confucian ethicists have attempted to rehabilitate the emphasis on shame in early Confucianism, but in doing so they have inadvertently highlighted the striking …Read more
Richmond, Virginia, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Asian Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of Gender, Race, and Sexuality |